Invitation
to a Beheading Reduxby Mina Hamiltonwww.dissidentvoice.org
July 7, 2004

We
shudder. The hairs on the backs of our necks rise as we confront the ghastly
fate of Daniel Pearl, Kim Sun-il, Paul Johnson, Nicolas Berg, and other
victims to come.

Decapitation harks back to
barbarous times, as when Herodias severed the head of St. John the Baptist
or Henry the V111th dispensed with his unfortunate wives.

Here is the cranium, the
seat of human intelligence. Here is the astounding culmination of billions
of years of evolution and it ignominiously sits on a platter for all to see.
Here are the optic nerves, the delicate interface between external data and
a myriad of synapses and neurons. Here is the noble forehead. Here is the
mouth, the portal for language, song and love. All reduced to a bloodied
hunk of meat.

In 2002, when the Wall
Street Journal writer Daniel Pearl was beheaded we gasped in anguish and
horror, not only at his and his family's suffering, but at a new 21st
century manifestation of human depravity. Beheading as political statement.
Beheading as threat and revenge. Beheading as public execution.

Enter the case of Nicolas
Berg, the 26-year-old Jew decapitated in Iraq sometime in early May, 2004.
Our hearts recoiled. There was an outpouring of public outrage. Bush
denounced the savage act.

End of story. Not end of
story.

Soon cyberspace was flooded
with websites claiming that the Berg decapitation video was a fake, a
"classic CIA-Black Op." (1) The theory is this: parties
unknown killed and decapitated Berg, but the video was a fraud. It showed
the staged decapitation of an already dead man. And the CIA/Special Forces
are responsible?

These grisly theories
spring, in part, from the near-perfect timing. The video hits the airwaves
smack in the midst of the Abu Ghraib scandal. As photos of naked, hooded
Iraqis parade across the media, as US support for the Iraq war plummets, the
man in an orange suit is cut down by al-Zarqawi, an al-Qaeda operative.

Just when the Pentagon and
the President is wrestling with the question of whether to release more Abu
Ghraib torture photos the supposed perpetrators of Berg's decapitation say
the torture in Iraqi prisons prompted their horrifying act. The Berg video
provides a compelling reason to withhold additional photos.

Fast on the heels of the
May 11 Berg video, the right wing goes ballistic: stop whining about Abu
Ghraib and refocus on the war. Even the New York Times criticizes the
rhetoric, "hard core supporters of the American war in Iraq…are cynically
trying to use the images of Mr. Berg to wipe awaay the images of Abu
Ghraib." (2)

Perfect timing doth not a
false video make. It's a motive, not a proof.

The questions being raised
on the internet, however, are serious ones. One has to overcome a visceral
disgust and review the frames of the Berg decapitation video. Few want to
enter this hideous terrain. Yet, if one assumes the act was a fake, it's
less painful to probe the evidence. Then, one is analyzing an appalling PR
stunt, not an in-real-time atrocity.

One oddity: the CIA
immediately, identifies a man who is reading a statement allegedly written
by al-Zarqawi and wearing a complete facemask as the terrorist al-Zarqawi.
How the agency makes this positive identification is a mystery.

Just as the convenient
mid-Abu Ghraid timing doesn't prove anything, neither does the CIA's quick
identification of al-Zarqawi.

Other oddities: All, not
one or two but all, of the terrorists are heavy-set, even fat, when one
would expect people operating underground and on-the-lam to be thin. They
are all wearing white sneakers, footwear foreign to the usual sandal-wearing
Arabs. On several occasions the "terrorists" touch their faces with their
left hands, an absolute no-no among Arabs. Their pose - standing legs akimbo
in a Marlon Brando stance - is atypical for Arabs. "Al-Zarqawi" doesn't have
a Jordanian accent. Berg is sitting in a white chair, identical to those
seen in Abu Ghraib torture photos. Berg is wearing a Guantanamo-issue orange
jump suit. (4)

The evidence becomes more
compelling with a technical analysis of the video. The video was carefully
edited with six different segments spliced together. There are significant
time lapses between the segments.

For example, the first
segment shows Berg sitting slightly sideways to the camera. It's stamped
13:26:27. The second segment shows a full frontal shot and is stamped
2:18:43. Hmmm. That's 11 hours. Why would terrorists shoot a video over an
11-hour period? Wouldn't they fear being discovered, wouldn't they want to
get the horrific deed done quickly? (6)

What is the point of these
two segments? In one Berg names his father, in the second, he names his
mother. Wouldn't the terrorists, if they wanted this information on the
video (which, in itself is distinctly strange) just force Berg to give the
information all at once?

Another oddity: During
these two segments Berg sits calmly, looking distinctly at ease. (Yes, he
could have been drugged, but his voice doesn't sound slurred.) There's not a
trace of the terror we've seen in the faces of other victims, such as Daniel
Pearl. Who can forget the Wall Street Journal reporter's visage of bleak
despair in his last photo?

The CIA-Black Op conspiracy
explanation: the FBI/CIA/US authorities filmed the segments during the three
separate interviews they conducted while Berg was in US custody. The
separate interviews explain the different times stamped on the video.

The information about
Berg's parents is typical prison interrogation/intake information. It was
spliced into the later video because someone thought Berg's talking about
his family would tug at the heartstrings of Americans.

This theory offers an
explanation for the bizarre US claim that Berg was never in US custody. This
assertion was made despite e-mails from the US Consul in Baghdad to the Berg
family stating Berg was held by US forces and interviewed by the FBI.
(7) The Black Op proponents argue that the US didn't want
anybody to know Berg had been in a US prison -- since that's where,
conspiracists allege, the video was filmed.

More on the splicing. What
terrorist has the time and sophisticated computer training to do complicated
edits? What terrorist has access to the necessary fancy computer? And what's
the motive?

Conspiracy theorists also
state the audio track was added later; the screaming is not synchronized
with the action. This audio addition could only have been done with the help
of editing software and the skills of a semi-professional video editor.
(8)

Then the doctors weigh in.
Drs. John Simpson of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and Dr. Jon
Norby, forensic expert and fellow of the Board of Medicolegal Death both
think the decapitation was staged. Why? Because there would have been
massive arterial bleeding with everybody in the vicinity covered by blood
within seconds. This is not the case in the video. Therefore, the doctors
say, Berg was already dead at the time of the decapitation.
(9)

Finally, there's the matter
of a similar M.O. with previous CIA/US force actions in and about Iraq.
Isn't the whole affair just too reminiscent?

It's reminiscent of the
exquisitely timed Private Lynch "rescue", launched just when the US war vs.
Iraq was mired down, when, instead of the promised welcome by flower-bearing
Iraqis, US soldiers were being bloodied by mortar attacks.

It harks back to Nayirah
the young Kuwaiti "refugee" whose tearful testimony about seeing Iraqi's
dumping-babies-out-of-incubators galvanized the US Congress and media to
support Gulf War 1. (Months later it came out that the young woman was the
Kuwaiti Ambassador's daughter and had not been out of the USA in months.)
(10)

It's of the same cloth as
the satellite photos that supposedly showed 250,000 Iraqi troops massing on
the border of Saudi Arabia in Gulf War 1, photos that helped to persuade the
Saudis to let infidel US troops on Muslim soil. Subsequently, the St.
Petersburg Times demonstrated these photos were of nothing but empty desert.
(11)

It strikes a chord with the
forged letter from Nigeria regarding an alleged attempted uranium ore sale
to Iraq, a letter key to Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein had an active
nuclear weapons program? (12)

What about the lies
regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

Was the Berg video a
CIA-Black Ops? We'll probably never know, but certainly a formal
investigation is in order. In the meantime, expect CIA dirty tricks in Iraq
and around the world.

Mina Hamilton is a writer based in New York City. She can be
reached at: minaham@aol.com.
References